Dreams
by Skylight Candytuft
Summary: Her love was his only dream he was the reason for all her dreams.


_Disclaimer: NARUTO_ _does not belong to me._

**Dreams**

He was quiet when he entered the sedate territory of the medical nin, a handful of limp flowers in his hand. He slipped wordlessly through one of the many doors that lined the hallway and the nurses at the station began to talk. He never minded them just as he never gave a thought to anything else his entire life.

The room he entered was free from the austere sterility of the entire hospital. The air conditioner had never been used the entire time the occupant had been there and the windows were left open at all times, allowing the fresh breezes to ruffle the gauzy curtains delicately. Flowers also decorated almost every nook in the room. Wildflowers. Always handpicked and randomly arranged in various vases and pots.

His eyes swerved to dead blooms on one of the vases. Silently, he threw them into the garbage can, rinsed the vase and refilled it with water before he plunked the next batch of flowers he brought into it.

Nobody understood why he went through this ritual every morning. Get up, get cleaned, get dressed, get going. It had been two years since she had been in a coma and even Tsunade's apprentice said there was no hope of ever waking her up. She was a vegetable for life.

But still, every morning, he would go into the forest foraging for wildflowers to plunk into the many vases littered in her room. His loyalty was unwavering; his dedication heartbreaking.

His teammates have often told him to get over it. They have tried coercion, bribery, diversion. They have yelled and screamed and called him a bloody idiot. None of these worked. He would still get up early in the morning, get her flowers, and visit her in the hospital.

He sat down on one of the stools provided and gently took one of her small hands in his own. While she had always been fragile and delicately-featured, she was even more so now. Without the challenge of much action, her muscles shrunk until she but was a frail form beneath the sheets. But he knew her mind was still strong. If anything, her mind would outlive her body. She was not a Yamanaka for nothing and if he were to speak, she was the best Yamanaka that ever lived, modifying and perfecting the techniques of her clan.

Slowly and deliberately, her fingers curled around his and he smiled slightly. It was their little secret. Nobody need know the things Yamanaka Ino was still capable of doing even in her comatose state.

* * *

_"You're here again." Her voice floated breezily into his mind. He turned around and found her standing a few feet from him, her feet bare. She tilted her head slightly like a curious sparrow._

_He smirked. "You should be used to it by now."_

_She smiled faintly. "You're the only one who visits me. It's been what? Two years?"_

_"Two and a half next week."_

_Her reply was a mischievous smile. "I see you've been counting." A stray breeze ruffled her unbound hair, lifting platinum strands in the air playfully. The lavender silk of her kimono rustled as she walked closer to him. A moment later, their fingers are intertwined and she lifted their joined hands before his eyes. "Is this what we're doing right now?" she asked him plainly._

_"Yes."_

_"I like it, actually," she smiled at the twined digits. "I've never actually held anyone's hands in _here_."_

_"I'm only the one who comes here," he responded monotonously._

_"Quite right," she smirked halfheartedly. "Where are the others anyway?"_

_"ANBU…Hokage…You know how it goes."_

_"And why are you still here?"_

_He paused, his eyes meeting hers. Here, in the center of his and her minds, there was an undeniable freedom that surged through his battered psyche and gave him the peace he sought. With a single smile, a wry twitch of her nose, she banished all demons in his soul._

_"You give me back my dreams."_

_She laughed bitterly. "I never knew you had dreams." She cast a sly glance at him. "And I never thought you capable of such sentimental words. Well," a faint trace of a blush colored her pale cheeks, "until I realized there were flowers in the room."_

_"You know there are flowers?" he asked, a spark of hope igniting in him. Perhaps she will wake someday. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…_

_She shook her head sadly. "It's never going to be like that, you know. I'll never wake up. I'm the Mindwalker Ninja trapped in her own body," she bit out. "But as to the flowers, I know because I've been working with flowers all my life. I can _sense_ them. And I know they weren't bought." Her teary eyes met his stoic green. "Thanks."_

He walked into the room noiselessly, a cluster of roses in his hands. He finally decided to take her advice on growing flowers. It was hard work. The plants kept dying on him. Uchiha Sakura told him gently he shouldn't be growing roses. They were much too choosy and fussy. High-maintenance.

Like Yamanaka Ino.

His hard work paid off and he was rewarded by a profusion of white and pink blossoms filling his "garden" with their delicate, tea-like fragrance.

Today, he wanted her to share his sense of accomplishment. She might laugh at him. For her, growing roses was as easy as eating chocolate pie.

_

* * *

"Hey…"_

_She never aged beyond twenty-one. She was forever twenty-one in this merged paradise of their imaginations although her blonde hair had long faded into silver in the physical realm. Her blue eyes twinkled when he walked towards her._

_"Roses?" she said with a soft smile. "You brought roses?"_

_"Yes, I did."_

_"They say they weren't bought…" she trailed off and her eyes widened with realization._

_"I grew them," he murmured. "At first, they died on me. I was too harsh. Or too giving. But in the end, they grew and blossomed."_

_She shook her head. "Most gardeners find it hard to cut their first roses."_

_"They are my first and my last, Ino."_

_She gave him a bewildered look and he took her hands and sat her down on the soft grass. He didn't know why he was telling her this._

_"It's been fifty-three years since you slept, Ino," he explained wearily. "And I'm not getting any younger. I'm fading, Ino."_

_"But you're still here," she whispered. "You're still here with me."_

_He lifted haunted green eyes to her blue ones. "I wanted to say goodbye, Ino. And thank you."_

_"You told me," she said laughingly as she wiped tears from her eyes, "Hinata-chan left in Naruto's arms." She smiled lovingly at him. "For so long, I've thought of you as my husband and that's the only thing that's keeping me on this plane. If you leave, I leave with you."_

_"Ino…"_

_"Shush." She placed a slender finger on his lips. "I love you, you know that? You gave me a reason to stay. You gave me back my dreams."_

_He kissed her hand gently and his face, forever twenty-one in this realm of dreams, was filled with a lifetime of peace and love._

_"I am ready, my love." He glanced at her. "Are you?"_

_She smiled and moved into his arms. "Wherever you go, anata."_

* * *

Naruto glanced wearily at the paperwork piled on his desk, his tired blue eyes focusing on the one report in his hands. He was there when the staff reported the death of Yamanaka Ino and the Kazekage. Their hands were intertwined and there was a look of utter contentment and peace on both their faces.

"Gaara…" he muttered. He knew his friend had been in love with the Mindwalker even before she was comatose. This was the ultimate proof of his feelings for the comatose kunoichi.

He sighed and plugged in the videotapes the nurses brought to him, a chronicling of a fifty-year love story the rest of Konoha was never really aware of. He activated the Sharingan that was the last gift of Uchiha Sasuke before he died. Sakura herself transplanted the eye.

The screen flared into life and for the first time, Naruto saw the reason why the Kazekage visited the Mindwalker Ninja everyday.

"You're still here, Gaara-kun." Naruto never saw Ino this downhearted. In his memory and in all their memories, perhaps, she was always the exuberant young woman they knew her to be. Guilt assailed the seventy-four-year old Hokage as Yamanaka Ino's dejected voice asked Gaara if they still remembered her.

"Hinata-sama wanted to thank you for giving her your strength. She's getting married to Naruto today," was his stoic friend's reply.

"Aa…"

On and on, he played videotape after videotape, using Sasuke's Sharingan for the longest time in its existence. The last tape was dated last week on the day they were discovered dead in Ino's room.

"I love you, you know that? You gave me a reason to stay. You gave me back my dreams."

"I am ready, my love." There was so much love as he looked at the young woman in his arms. "Are you?"

She smiled peacefully, all the love and happiness shining in her eyes. "Wherever you go, anata."

* * *

Nara Ino placed the flowers on her great-uncle's grave and stood back, her blond hair swaying in the breeze. Under his name was that of her grandfather's best friend, the kunoichi she was named after. "Gaara of the Desert, Kazekage and Ino, Rose of the Desert," it said. "In death, undivided." Under those words, carved by the late Hokage himself, was the cryptic statement, "Her love was his only dream; he was the reason for all her dreams."

Those words never failed to elicit a few tears from her. "It was the greatest love story never told," Naruto once told her before he, too, joined his beloved Hinata and Ino believed it with all her heart.

"Hey, what's all those tears for?"

Ino smiled and faced the descendant of the Hokage, Uozumaki Gaara, her fiancé. "It's nothing, Gaara-kun."

He wound his arm around her waist and gave her that wide grin he inherited from his carefree grandfather. "Gaara and Ino, huh?"

"Uncle Gaara never had dreams until he met her, you know?" she told him softly.

"So did I, until I met you," he whispered back, his hand automatically finding hers.

She smiled and he smiled back at her. Together, they walked off into the sunset, the happy sound of their laughter floating in the spring air.


End file.
